The earth is a little bit like me. The rocks are like my bones, the trees are like my lungs, the rivers are like my veins. The earth digests like my stomach, the wind is like my breath and the moon pushes and pulls the oceans like my beating heart. The biggest animal on the planet is a one of a kind. It is the planet! And we can see the different parts of nature specialising in the functional roles of a super holobiont organism.

There is only one physical object in the universe and everything is connected to this one giant thing. Every scientific experiment assumes connections between the observer and the observed and so verifies this fact. It is not possible to identify anything as being isolated since any identification implies connections. Therefore everything has a sequence of direct physical connections leading to everything else. So in the most universal context there is no "that", there is only this one giant thing with consciousness and infinite diversity.

Furthermore when we consider the plants, the animals and our own abilities to think, we must conclude that apparently this giant organism has the infrastructure for a brain. Our thoughts, our communications, our books and the hardware we use to facilitate the sharing of ideas and information. The Internet and its peripherals such as hard drives are long term memory cells and human thought is a unique kind of processing power. We all, together, are functioning as the brain of this planetary organism!

We are being hosted. Yet we are also hosts. If we observe ourselves we find that we are also covered in micro-organisms. We have 10 times more micro-organism cells living on us that we have human cells. They live on our surfaces only, which includes the skin and also inside your mouth, stomach and digestive system. Most of these micro-organisms can't live without us and nor we without them. We need them to digest our food. So not only are you living as part of a super holobiont organism, the planet, you are also a planet, a super holobiont organism!

An interesting question is: are the micro-organisms affecting my thinking? Yes at least some of it. We often observe when our micro-organism inhabitants are stressed we get sick. So some thoughts related to digestion at least are triggered by micro-organisms. As a result, our thoughts are forced to give attention to the micro-organism world. This is beneficial to us as a warning system. So are the micro-organisms also thinking about their stress, in their own way? Did their thinking cause us to think something similar or related? Are we to some degree thinking though them? They are therefore we think?

It is also really fascinating to consider it from the inverse perspective, with the planet as the thinking being that can be aware of itself. What could it be thinking? Does human history contribute to the artefacts of its mind? Are the mental activities of plants, animals and humans contributing to its sanity?

What are minds? What is time? We need to be aware of the current moment to understand how to survive it. This is why sleep walking is so dangerous since without awareness of the current moment one cannot respond to changing conditions. With humans, all the senses of our environment come streaming in and are being “remembered” or recorded. We also store this information in the things and people around us. Some of our micro-organisms thoughts also feeds into this current moment. If a mind can become aware of its body and its memory, the subsequent stream of recorded thought is then available for further processing i.e. conscious thought.

Minds are composed of sub-conscious and conscious functional modules. A sub-conscious mind arrives through a memory bank of details about living sensory input. The conscious mind scans this memory and knits together relationships and opportunities for the survival of the organism. These knitted artefacts are conscious thoughts and as well as covering the current moment they also carry long term references and analyses.

These thoughts may also be stored to memory for later processing creating feed back loops. The capacity of a mind's memory bank determines its time references. More memory means a more detailed current moment. Relative to our minds the planet's conscious thoughts would include something longer term. Similarly relative to our minds, our micro-organisms thoughts are shorter term. One part of a conscious mind needs to be concerned with the details of the current moment. Otherwise an organism will run into trouble fast.

So one path to becoming aware of itself as a host, could be the inhabitants of the planet first considering that an aggregate memory bank exists - human history and how we understand ourselves - becomes the basis for a larger mind. Then achieve this they must read the memory bank and process its contents to the benefit of the host and therefore themselves in a sense this united thinking forms the basis of the planets awakened awareness of itself. They will need to build extra memory banks so that they can store the results of this processing for future processing, thereby creating a longer conscious current moment for benefit of the hosts strength, diversity and health.

Entirely understanding the planet's potential conscious mind may not be possible. To understand the planet's terms of reference we can analyse human history and see which stories and super cultural ideas are persisting. Observing human thought over time is a lot easier than plants or animals since we keep news and history of our thoughts alive through art, culture and documents. Perhaps the themes of evolution, war, industry, architecture, learning and love are also functional terms for the planet's conscious thought or perhaps its terms of reference are even longer than those. This planetary animal may already have or may yet attain self awareness.

Perhaps the planet's mind requires human awareness and cooperation to actuate its conscious mind. Are we aware of our host being our bigger body? Can we understand its conscious mind or influence its critical terms of reference? If the earth is an extension of each person why live parasitically when being symbiotic causes your bigger body increased strength and health? When is war ever necessary if it is always one fighting another aspect of oneself? We need to become more aware of ourselves since it is obvious that we are all connected and are part of the same super holobiont organism. Once realzied into our culture only then can we make the planet a self aware being that can actively be conscious and improve our strength, diversity and condition.